Brief by Shorts91 Newsdesk / 07:55am on 19 Oct 2025,Sunday Science
India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter made a groundbreaking observation of a massive solar eruption's impact on the Moon's tenuous atmosphere. The CHACE-2 instrument detected a sharp rise in lunar exosphere pressure and density increasing by over an order of magnitude when a coronal mass ejection (CME) struck on May 10, 2024. This marks the first recorded direct impact of a CME on the Moon's atmospheric boundary. High-energy solar particles knocked off surface atoms and molecules, forming part of the exosphere. The findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, confirm theoretical models and provide crucial insights for future lunar mission planning, as the Moon lacks magnetic field protection from solar activity.
